The landmark lawsuit Roe v. Wade guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion, reduced infant mortality significantly, and reaffirmed rights to control medical treatment, rights to procreate and rights to contraception.
After it was overturned in 2022, there has been a slew of abortion rights removals across the nation restricting access to abortions for women across the nation. This has had serious implications for women’s health particularly affecting poor women, women of color and midlife women in their caregiving roles.
Roe v. Wade began with Texan Norma McCorvey deciding that after two pregnancies and her continued drug and alcohol abuse that she no longer wanted to continue with the pregnancy. At six months pregnant, Texas lawyers Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington filed a lawsuit on her behalf under the pseudonym of Roe. The opposing lawyer Henry Wade was infamous for his high conviction rate and prosecuted Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald.
The case concluded its opinion on the basis of the fourteenth amendment which states that “no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law”, which implies a right to privacy. Weddington has argued that liberty must extend to the right to end an unwanted pregnancy and that legal personhood began at birth. The court concurred with this definition but allowed states to place limits on abortion in regards to the development of the fetus.
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade twelve states: Idaho, Utah, Arizona, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Iowa, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia have fully banned abortion making it completely illegal to have access to an abortion through medical or private facilities. Six have severely restricted abortion access, and several more have imposed limitations on abortion access. This ban also extends to cases of rape or incest.
This has implications for poor women, women of color, caregiving women at midlife. Dr. Judith A Berg and Dr. Nancy Fugate Woods explain that a pregnancy can occur until the onset of menopause. Because of this unintended pregnancy or pregnancies in which a woman does not wish to become pregnant, can occur very late in a woman’s life. 51 percent among women 40 and older are unintended. In another review on unintended pregnancies in the U.S. statistics also found that identifying as Black or Hispanic having a below poverty level income, experiencing a non-voluntary first sexual intercourse especially at a young age, participating in the sex trade, experiencing stressful life events and having had a previous abortion.
Furthermore the article explains that legal access to abortion improves women’s healthcare and does not increase the usage of abortions, “930,000 abortions obtained across the US in 2020 represents a sustained increase in abortion and more than one in three of those abortions were obtained in states that are now certain or likely to ban abortion… decades of research consistently show that abortion bans and restrictions don’t reduce unintended pregnancy or the demand for abortion, and do not improve women’s health. Instead, they impose significant hurdles to obtaining care, causing stress for people in need of abortion and leading some to experience forced pregnancy with all its consequences.”
Furthermore, poor women, women of color, and those in the LGBTQ+ community also find themselves at further risk for a need for abortion these communities. Forty nine percent of abortion patients are below the poverty line and almost 4 in were black women. Reasons for this include limited access to health care which impacts access to contraception and other services included in pregnancy planning.
Women of color have historically been victims of medical discrimination more often, such as experimentation, forced sterilization, and inattention. This compounded with the fact that women of color often have limited access to transportation options to access abortions in other states also adds to costs adds to the overall cost of an abortion. This is particularly important in the American South where abortion bans have taken place and more than half of the U.S’s population of Black women live.
In the past couple of years several cases involving child rape and abortion in the case of medical emergency have been brought to the public’s attention however, no further legal action to amend abortion law at a federal level has been taken. Berg and Woods explain steps that can be taken to mitigate harms posed by lack of federal protection.They explain that strengthening sexual health education provided in schools to increase awareness of options for preventing unwanted or unplanned pregnancy are of utmost importance.
This involves improving access to information about fertility and fertility management, which includes monitoring menstrual cycles and menopausal status, and reliable and effective birth control approaches for all reproductive life stages, paying special attention to the specific needs of midlife women. Additionally advocating for inclusion of explicit coverage of effective and reliable contraception and other pregnancy prevention methods in health insurance plans as well as provide readily accessible and affordable early pregnancy detection
Furthermore, providing “morning after,” Plan B contraception to women to have on hand can give women contingencies after sex. Additionally, advocating for policies that would insure women’s right to agency over their bodies. They end their statement stating continued advocacy and push for legislative change necessary for protection and change saying that inaction is no longer an option.
